Poached Egg on Toast (16 page)

“That’s not sportsmanlike,” Mr. Dickinson is saying in a soft voice. “Why did you do it, Chippy? Tell me why you act this way. Why did you do that in front of all those people?”

Bridget finds herself slipping between them, something she would never have done had she not finished a second three-finger gin. She feels sorry for Mr. Dickinson who is so meek himself, he cannot control his son.

“Never you mind about what the others think, Mr. Dickinson,” she says. “Chippy has been cooped up here all day not feeling very well. I’ll go in after dinner and pick up the chess pieces. You’ll help me, won’t you, Chippy?”

But Chippy is sullen and will not answer. Bridget, watching the father’s face, says again, “Never mind now, Mr. Dickinson. There’ll always be something to humble us, no matter who we are. A small item like this won’t shake the world down around us.”

But father and son stand staring at each other, heads bent, when Bridget leaves them. Mr. Dickinson needs an explanation.

In the absence of Maria, Bridget and Opa serve dinner. Bridget has removed her topknot; she has slipped on a gypsy skirt and black sweater, and has twirled the orangewood stick between her eyelids. The atmosphere in the dining room has changed tonight, perhaps because of Maria’s absence, or Mr. Featherby’s drinking, Mrs. all-day grudge, or Shelby Dickinson’s confinement in her room with feverish Chippy. Cheeks wear a pale edge where there should be a natural outdoor glow. Conversation develops as a series of hysterical lurches. It is the eve of departure, after all. Mr. Featherby enters the dining room with eyes blazing, feet tripping, his face at once defiance and challenge—a rare combination, given his marital rank. And there he is, passing the cheeseplate to his wife during a lull, speaking in a loud, sweet voice. “Have a little tightener, Ruby?”

The evening closes on a scene in the dining room. The Finn and German have eaten excessively and sign a chit for two
Underbergs
, which they take to their room in hopes that this will settle their stomachs. The Markham and Featherby children thump one another on the back as they scatter out of the room without a backward glance. Shelby and Harry Dickinson go to bed early, Shelby in meek and unexpressed frustration, Harry in guilt over having so enjoyed himself alone today, on the slopes. Chippy does not pick up the chess pieces, which now lie forgotten in the games room and can be seen in the firelight beneath the table and behind the legs of chairs. Mrs. Allenby has glared at Mr. Allenby throughout the meal, and resolves that her husband will pay for this,
this
being her broken spirit as well as her ankle. She looks forward to the long drive back to the Dover-Calais ferry, during which he will be captive at the wheel and will not dare to
not
listen to what she is now preparing to say. Angela and Spence Markham, in sock feet, have gone upstairs to pack.

Opa dries and puts away the dishes. Because Maria is still in Salzburg, he takes a half-full bottle of brandy from the liquor shelf, tucks it inside his shirt and climbs the back stairs to his room, where he will partake of a furtive and harmless binge. Before he rinses the toothbrush cup into which he will pour the brandy, he stands looking out at Disappearing Mountain and sheds the evening tears for his son.

But what of Ruby Featherby, Brighton and Bridget, below? What are they up to?

One overhead light illuminates a corner table in the dining room. These three unlikely companions are sitting, each with a glass in hand. And they are laughing, three parallel laughs.

Brighton laughs without purpose, because he is caught in that no man’s land between drunkenness and sobriety, wantonness and fidelity, deliverance and bondage.

His wife’s laughter is not so undirected. No fool she, Ruby is as capable as the next woman of sniffing out a challenge to the observance of marital rites which take place between the sheets and according to the self-proclaimed laws of matrimony. This is one area over which she will never release her grip, and though Brighton’s drinking disgusts her, though she is exhausted from the slalom that carried on interminably all afternoon, though she will lie like a cool stone beneath Brighton when he climbs on top of her later in the night, she will stay by his side in the room until this person wearing the black eyeshadow removes herself to her own room. Ruby has seen through and looked past this temporary rival. She will defend her territory, despite her estimation of its present worth.

As for Bridget, she knows when trump has been pulled. She laughs because she can make things uncomfortable for a short time, and does. She laughs because, despite the obstacles, she and Mr. Featherby will carry a current between them to their separate rooms. But Bridget also knows that the most pressing problems at hand are that nineteen new guests will be arriving tomorrow between the hours of one and six, and Maria will have to be picked up at the station.

Pauline was startled by the memory of Mae West swinging herself around.
“Liebling, Ich habe meine Schlüssel im Zimmer liegen gelassen.” Darling, I’ve left my keys in my room
. This was hopeful—Pauline’s first dream in German. The reruns on the 10-inch black-and-white were invading, but they were invading dubbed.

Pauline put her key on the ring, gathered up the garbage, and called for Maggie. Maggie had been learning about Japan at school and had borrowed Pauline’s kimono to practise her
Geisha
kick. Since breakfast she’d been doing a high-speed shuffle around the dining-room circuit, her right foot making a side-stepping circle, followed by a quick below-the-knee thrust under the cloth. The extra folds of kimono, a foot longer than Maggie, were straightening out behind. Pauline would have laughed if Frau Becker hadn’t been on her mind.

The past five weeks, when Frau Becker came to clean on Fridays, she’d been arriving with food. Not only had she been bringing food, she’d begun to ask for food. Last week she brought windfalls, a paper shopping bag full, bumping against the front fender of her bike. They’d been in her storeroom most of the winter and were shrivelled, almost dried. The week before that,
Torte —
Maggie called it a pie, Frau Becker’s solid body shaking with laughter at the abruptness of the word—and before that, six brown eggs, the feathers of her dark hens stuck to the splotchy shells.

“Butter,”
she’d said, the first time, to Pauline.
“Sie können mir Butter bringen.”
She’d even opened her change purse and had taken out two
Mark
seventy, and snapped it shut. She offered the coins with a quick glance into Pauline’s face.
“Sie verstehen, Frau Stanton,”
she said.
“Sie verstehen.”
And yes, Pauline had understood.
German in
15
Easy Lessons
had been on her bedside table for six months and, anyway, who wouldn’t have understood the word
Butter
. It was just that trading-off or even selling goods from the commissary was
Verboten
. She’d been warned by Richard’s host family when she arrived. Once the villagers find out you have a NATO connection, look out. Coffee, butter, sugar—they especially want cigarettes and whisky, she’d been told. It always comes down to that, cigarettes and whisky.

But Pauline was the one who had to look directly into Frau Becker’s face, the one who had to read what was behind her eyes. She pushed the hand back, and Frau Becker returned the coins to her purse. But before Frau Becker reached for the mop and chamois, she held three fingers up to Pauline, her order firmly placed:
“Drei Pfund Butter, bitte.”

The following Friday, three packages of butter were tucked into the bicycle bag and the order given for the next week:
Schinken
. Frau Becker seemed to know that ham in the commissary that week was half the price of ham in the village store, though Pauline could not even think about how she got this information. The commissary was in the city and Frau Becker did not go to the city. She did not speak one word of English—except to say to Maggie, “Byeee-Byeee,” as she left each Friday at four. The rest of the time, she muttered through her work, always muttering, as if telling herself stories. Stories related in dialect that Pauline could not or was not intended to know.

As for Pauline’s German, she was not able to struggle through complicated explanations such as the reasons
why
commissary purchases were
Verboten. Es tut mir leid. Ich verstehe nicht
, she could say, as her book had taught her.
I’m sorry. I don’t understand
. But Frau Becker’s head, with the greyblond bun pinned tightly behind, gave the nod each week when she placed her order:
You understand
.

Pauline stood for a moment by the radio. Maggie had set the dial to short wave, trying to satisfy her longings for her own language. Pauline turned the knob, catching a German voice speaking English, a woman’s voice: “Ninety-five pair-cent said they pray-fair-red blon-dis.” Then it was gone. Lost in a garble of static and tongues and retorts.

Pauline left the key under the lantern for Frau Becker, helped Maggie with her jacket, and together they wheeled the outdoor garbage container to the curb. She thought of Mae West, one hand on her hip, the other holding out her bathroom waste to the garbage collector:
“Come on back, honey. I think you’ve forgotten my garbage this time.”

Their skates were in the back of the car. The rink was located at the edge of the city, a twenty-minute drive. An indoor rink and a good thing, too, as the air was unsettled today. Pauline was becoming used to the chill, the snowless winter. Already, and this was February, the farmers were burning off the feathery growth of last year’s asparagus. But something wild could be smelled—the wind, perhaps. It suspended holding-patterns of dust over long black mounds in the fields. Perhaps it was a storm, unseen, about to move down into the valley in a horizontal dark line.

Grades three and four from the International School would be skating; Pauline was a parent helper. The school would be closed in the afternoon, so she would bring Maggie back home with her and stop at the commissary on the way.
Kaffee
, this week. Three half-kilo packages. Never so much asked for that Pauline could protest, not really. Still, she imagined a pantry shelf in Frau Becker’s tiny farm bulging with North American staples that Pauline herself was providing. A thought flashed through her mind, not for the first time. What if Frau Becker was selling these items to the villagers? She bit hard on her bottom lip. This was paranoia. For those few things. Richard, though—she should have told Richard. In any case, it was going to stop. She would hand over the coffee that afternoon and firmly say:
Nicht mehr. Ich kann nicht
.

Wasn’t Frau Becker well paid? Hadn’t Pauline agreed to the exact hourly wage Frau Becker had requested that first day when she’d propped the old bike beside the rosebushes and stood expressionless in the doorway, waiting to be hired? Hadn’t Pauline been more than fair? The eyes of Frau Becker seemed to be fixed on her from the windshield, and Pauline had to blink and shake her head to keep the car from being towed into the fast lane and the lunatic speed of the
Autobahn
. She hoped Frau Becker would arrive today without food. It would make it easier to say:
Ich kann nicht
.

The rink was crowded with busloads of children from international and German schools. Although the loudspeaker blared instructions to skate in one direction, three or four skaters darted against the solid oval rush, which glided like a heavy murmur. Rock music, instructions again, more music.
The rules
. Pauline never entirely felt that she knew
the rules
in this country. Blasted over loudspeakers in rinks, posted on fences at outdoor pools, welded to locker doors at indoor stadiums. It was she who barged into change rooms from the wrong side, and was chased back by custodians; she who emerged wearing boots where only bare feet were permitted; she who entered turnstiles through the
Exit
; who forgot to bring her market basket to stores that did not provide bags; who pulled out the wrong currency in lineups at the
Bäckerei
; who did not know the word Öl at the gas station. It was she who, with Maggie beside her, had walked across village fieldroads with a present for their landlord’s new baby and, when the door was opened and they were greeted, blurted out,
“Ein Gift, fürs Baby,”
not knowing until she dug out the pocket dictionary on the way home that
Gift
was the word for poison. (“Why didn’t the mother invite us in to see the baby? Why?” Maggie kept asking. “I could see its crib across the kitchen. You didn’t say anything awful, did you? Did you?”) The door having shut slowly, in their faces.

When all of the laces were tied and mittens pulled onto small hands, Maggie and her Grade Three friends entered the stream of skaters and formed a chain on the ice. The music was fast; several older teenagers were twisting in and out at high speeds. Pauline watched from the boards and stepped down onto the ice just as the music was about to change—probably the direction, too. The instruction to change direction was shouted out at that very moment, as if Pauline had thought it through the loudspeaker. The ribbon of skaters wavered, was about to buckle, and executed a surprisingly graceful about-face.

Pauline skated the oval twice and was rounding the curve for the third time, when out of the corner of her eye she saw a tall youth go down. A speeding skater had darted close to him at the far end of the rink. The youth was bigger and taller than the hundreds of school children on the ice and, when he fell, Pauline noted four things (remembering these later, much later): how far he had to fall because of his height; that his legs had been moving awkwardly; that he was not wearing a helmet—German children did not wear helmets at the rinks, whether they were beginners or not; that he went over backwards, his head being the first part of his body to strike the ice.

When her blades brought her to the end of the rink, she bent over the boy; the small group around him made way as she kneeled beside his head. The music had switched to a waltz; the skaters carried on. But the boy—he was sixteen or seventeen—was convulsing violently, his back an arc, his legs and arms spastic, saliva oozing from the side of his mouth, his head rising and falling from the ice. And the most terrible thing. A click, a regular clicking sound was coming from some deep part of him. The children who were bunched around seemed poised in terror. Two adults circled close and went back to their skating. Pauline held the boy’s head and shoulders gently in her arms until the terrible writhing and clicking—which seemed to go on for minutes—was over.